Sponsored by the House Chairman of the Joint Committee of Public Safety and Homeland Security, Harold P. Naughton, Jr., (D— Clinton) and co-hosted by Holyoke State rep. Aaron Vega (D—Holyoke) the tour will make five stops before it ends later this fall.

The event will held in the Community Room at the Holyoke Senior Center, located at 291 Pine St., from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The general public is invited.

Naughton said he wants to update the state's gun statutes, but said it will take listening to state citizens to produce the balanced legislation he feels the state needs. Naughton acknowledged that crafting a bill that will effectively deal with gun violence and at the same time satisfy the security needs and sporting rights of the state's citizens will be difficult.

"We will have quite a balancing job ahead of us," he said. “It is imperative that we as legislatures take every step available to educate ourselves on the topic of local gun violence. Specific issues rampant in some communities, such as illegal gun availability on the streets, must be addressed and ultimately eliminated. It is my intention that through the Gun Violence Listening Tour I may visit various communities across the Commonwealth in order to thoroughly address this intricate and pressing issue.”

The Holyoke stop is the second such town hall-styled public meeting in Western Mass. Naughton held a May hearing in Chicopee that included Chicopee Mayor Michael Bissonnette and a contingent of Springfield officials, including Mayor Domenic Sarno, Springfield Police Commissioner William Fitchet and Deputy Springfield Police Chief William C. Cochrane.

In April, 2012, Chicopee center saw a major shootout between a convicted felon Carlos A. Gonzales-Laguer and city and state police.

At the Chicopee hearing, Springfield authorities noted that, once rare, calls for "shots fired" have become common in many city neighborhoods, with alerts coming through the city's ShotSpotter acoustic monitoring system. Cochrane said many of those shots fired are so commonplace that city citizens ignore them, and that police are aware only because of the ShotSpotter activation.

Municipal officials said at the earlier hearing that a major source of firearms in Western Massachusetts are states with less strict gun laws, such as South Carolina and Vermont.

State Rep. Harold P. Naughton Jr., House chairman of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, will visit Hampden County to hold a Gun Violence Listening Tour on Sept. 6.The Republican [file]